


Grapevine Valentine

by nostalgicplant



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Depression, Get back together, M/M, Post-breakup, Toxic Relationships, chubby!yuuri, depressive episodes, lost lovers to lovers, main character depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 09:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13948758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicplant/pseuds/nostalgicplant
Summary: It has been a long time, and Yuuri is still waiting. Fingers pressed to a glass pane, eyes watching empty streets, ghosts haunting his apartment, he is waiting.





	Grapevine Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone. So I wrote this fic post my own breakup, which I took really hard. It was originally just an exercise in poetic prose, but then it turned into 10k of self-gratifying sadness. So some words about this. First, it's not healthy to be in love with someone 10 years after you break up. That's unhealthy. Second, there are some? Odd things about this fic that led me to labeling it as 'toxic realtionship.' So why did I publish it anyways? Well first of all, I love attention, as does anyone who posts on this site. Second, I wrote this as an exercise in writing, so if you want to critique me, please do. I need it. I want to improve. Finally, perhaps this is a 'don't do what I did.' Live and let go. Don't be Yuuri. also! get help for your depression. don't wallow in it. As someone who suffers from severe depression, getting help is good! therapy is good! people want to help you! it is okay to be weak! oky thats all. Thanks and goodnight.

&&&

THE MIDDLE

&&&

Yuuri spends the morning making tea and trying very hard not to think about his depression. He has found that if he looks at it with his eyes closed, it only haunts and does not occupy him. Work today is slow. Yuuri has drunk at least nine cups of tea, and it’s just nearing eleven. 

The old woman who always checks out too many books and then has to scramble to return them is paying overdue fees, counting her coins with a careful repetition, and Yuuri has to fight the urge to wince when the coins rap against the metal counter. 

She apologizes, her smile old and craggy. Yuuri replies something nonchalant, maybe a similar apology for not being able to help her. He sweeps the coins into the cash register, not bothering to sort them. Minami can handle it later. 

The woman leaves. Today, she checked out 5 books. They were all on the Great Depression. He is the Great Depression. He has the Great Depression in his bones. Yuuri is just a pile of old books, marked and worn, being carried out by an old woman who wears concordant shades of pink and smells like cats.

The best thing about getting a degree in a dying art is that he’s practically guaranteed a job. Majoring in library studies means that he was swooped up as soon as he graduated at the top of his class. For several years, he stayed in Detroit, waiting. Now, he works in a small branch of the New York City Public Library in Brooklyn. His apartment is full of half-read books and empty mugs of tea. The same goes for his desk. 

Yuuri Katsuki is thirty years old. He lives alone, in a small apartment with an old, adopted miniature dachshund named Meyer. He is the head librarian at the Rodgers branch of the New York City Public Library. He has been in love exactly once in his life.

-

Meyer’s bones must hurt that night, because he gets halfway down the block before he sits down and looks at Yuuri with pathethic, cataract-filled eyes, and whines. 

Yuuri adopted him because he was old and Yuuri was tired of being alone. He was never going to be adopted. He’s shy and his bark sounds like a seal and he was probably once beautiful and chestnut, but now his coat is old and slightly dull, peppered with grey. 

He carries him home, tucked under his arm like a football while Meyer dutifully licks Yuuri’s thumb. 

The apartment is warm from the radiator having been running all day. It’s spring, March just beginning to peek through the budding branches of the trees outside Yuuri’s windows, but is still cold enough and if Yuuri doesn’t keep the radiator running, he has to walk around wrapped in a blanket burrito. Plus, he has an old dog. Meyer doesn’t deserve to be cold all day. 

He settles down at his laptop, sets Meyer on the floor, and grabs a cold cup of coffee from this morning, or at the very least, this week, and sips it while the computer boots up. 

Yuuri sets the cup down onto the stack of novels, dogeared and well-marked, and opens his email. Minami has sent him a note where the subject is just ‘COINS!!1.” He deletes it and moves to the next. A note from his editor, asking if he’s going to make his next deadline. 

He glances at his abandoned manuscript, stained with coffee and red ink, laying on the floor. Meyer is laying on the scene when the main character moves to California. He knows this because he wrote ‘describe sunshine better?’ at the top of the page, unsure how to do it after a particularly gloomy winter, and past five years. 

“yes, chris,” Yuuri types. “I am almost done with the tantamount scene. Needs polish. Thanks.” 

This is a blatant lie. Yuuri has not touched his manuscript in a week. He has no idea what the tantamount scene is even going to be. Once, he did, but now, he does not. No one wants to read a book by a depressed author with a depressed plot and depressed main characters. For the umpteenth time, Yuuri wonders if Chris only picked up his book because they were buddies in college and he still feels bad about what happened. 

For some time, Yuuri just sits at his desk and rocks back and forth in his chair. His apartment needs cleaning, dinner needs to be made, and Yuuri should really try and rally all his missing mugs from hiding spots around his apartment. 

He climbs into bed instead, only to climb back out when Meyer waddles over to beg for dinner. 

Back in. He switches on the bedside lamp and pulls out a half-read novel from his bedside drawer. 

‘The Human Conquest to Overthrow the Universe.’ 

He falls asleep to his internal monologue of the author reading to him, soft silver hair dances in his eyes as he speaks. 

-

Groundhog day syndrome haunts me, Yuuri tells his therapist the next morning: before work. His therapist makes an insightful comment about some other syndrome that Yuuri probably has. He asks if Yuuri has been exercising like he suggested. 

Yuuri considers the jaunt he took last night with Meyer. He tells the man that he walks his dog. Apparently, this is not considered sufficient exercise. The therapist is displeased. 

They talk for a short bit longer, Yuuri shakes his hand, and parts to drive to work. He only goes so that when he has to introduce himself and his disorder, he can say; “hello, my name is Yuuri Katsuki, I’m in remission from severe depression, don’t worry, I won’t go off the rails, I have a therapist.” 

Even the concept of having a therapist calms many people. Minami included. 

-

He inquires how therapy was when he arrives at work. Yuuri shrugs, tells him it was the same as always, and continues sorting through returned books tossed through the book drop. One of them just happens to be the book that Yuuri fell asleep to the night before. The cover is heavily cracked. He rubs his thumb across it soothingly, as if apologizing. 

Minami asks if he’s a fan of Nikiforov. 

Yes, Yuuri replies. I have known him. 

-

Pink is the color of forgetting. When blood fades, it becomes pink. When the red ink of valentines cards long past sits in the stale sun too long, it goes a fluttering pink. The woman who always wears clashing pinks enters with one of her books about Yuuri (the Great Depression, keep up) and sets it onto the counter in front of him. 

She asks if they have any other books by the author. Yuuri responds with a smile, as if he works in a five star hotel and not an underfunded library branch. He does not know why this woman does not know how to work a library and search it by the author’s last name. 

He apologizes. The book is very old, and the author has long since gone out of date. He recommends the largest branch in Manhattan, which has a book written on the Cold War (Yuuri’s apartment when the radiator is not on, a stony silence between him and his dog) by the same author. 

She tells him that she only has a bike. He is startled. How does she carry so many books home? He does not ask. 

Yuuri taps ‘order’ and lets her know that the book will be delivered to the branch by early next week. He isn’t sure what day it even is, but early next week seems like a good enough answer. She gives him a gracious smile. The fib is accepted. She flouts away in a cloud of pink. 

The tea is the color of muddy tires. He’s added just a splash of milk to help it cool and give it a little extra flavor. Yuuri stirs it gently and opens Microsoft Word. The cool blush of the morning helps him write. He always writes better at work. 

Yuuri begins to build his character. The plot does not matter, it is the characters who he finds the most interesting. His lead is modeled after his college boyfriend. Fiery, dashing, and charismatic, he conquers the world. Yuuri writes him flawed, though. Mortally flawed. He will die by the end of the novel. It is no threat on his ex, nor a premonition, but rather a fitting cycle. Yuuri was left, and so he will leave Viktor in the pages. 

-

Minami kisses him in the corridor. He leans in slowly and gently, wraps a hand around Yuuri’s cheek, and pecks him softly. 

Yuuri apologizes and settles his hand onto Minami’s shoulder. The younger man’s face is tight with disappointment, but not surprise. 

It is not Yuuri’s first kiss since the incident. He has been kissed many times in the last ten years. But not in the last five. Not since things became a thick black blanket, an incorrigible thing that he could no longer run from in booming clubs and blooming artistry scenes. 

-

Yuuko, his landlord, is a cheerful woman with three lovely children. She brings him casseroles along with his monthly bills. Yuuri always thanks her graciously, sometimes binge eating half the casserole in one night. It is so good to finally have food that is cooked with love and consists of more than dry pasta and a half-hearted salad. 

No matter how little he eats, his depression still sways his metabolism from one extreme to the other. He fills out the jumpers that were once loose. Yuuri can’t bring himself to mind, but it’s more of the nature that he has more important things to worry about than gaining thirty pounds. He’s getting old now. It’s only natural. 

Once, Yuuri was an athlete. He ate well and exercised often, made himself so busy with work that all his ghosts couldn’t catch him. Life is slow now, less full but more fulfilling. 

-

He gets dinner that night with an old friend from university. 

Phichit works as the head of marketing for an expensive firm in Manhattan and Los Angeles. He travels back and forth but makes a point to always visit Yuuri when he is in town. It’s odd that most of the gang from Detroit somehow ended up East. Perhaps drawn by a magnet that connects them all. 

They dine at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. Yuuri wears a button down shirt with a sweater over it, one that manages to conceal the bulge in his belly quite well without making him look frumpy. Phichit stands up to hug him when Yuuri meets him at the table. He folds himself into Phichit’s arms, remembers their years in college spent laughing on their beds, pouring over textbooks together, planning futures that never came true. 

Phichit tells Yuuri that he’s engaged now, shows off a flashing ring with a smile, and Yuuri coos over it. Emotion is genuine when he’s with Phichit. He still considers him his best friend, even though Yuuri isn’t sure that the feeling is duplicated. He doesn’t care. Phichit will always be important to him. 

Yuuri asks how his fiances are, and Phichit opens his phone to show dozens of images of Mike, Juan, and Phichit together, the world’s cutest interracial polygamous couple. Quote Phichit. 

Yuuri has to agree. He’s met the fiancés several times, and they’re incredibly sweet. The three of them work together very well. Phichit’s love life is one of the only ones that Yuuri can stand to hear about. The rest are boring, stories of breaking up and getting back together, meeting the same dreadful people in different bodies over and over again. 

For someone to genuinely believe in love, they must be very brave. 

Phichit is very brave. 

He promises to invite Yuuri to the wedding, and with a wink, warns him to look out for the bachelor party invites. They dine in peace. All is well, until Phichit asks about his book. 

Yes, Yuuri testily replies to the question of if ‘you’re-still-writing-your-book-about-viktor-right?’ Kind of he adds. It’s complicated, he continues. 

Phichit raises an eyebrow. He sees right through him. They were all close in university. Phichit was Yuuri’s shoulder to cry on when he got left in the middle of the night, curled up on his red checkered bedspread, heaving into a pillowcase. 

Yuuri is actually, genuinely over Viktor, or at least he tells himself this. It was eight yeas ago. Viktor stormed out and broke his heart. Yuuri has kissed and fucked many men since then. So what if he has not loved since? He doesn’t need to be loved to be complete. 

Phichit asks Yuuri if he still loves Viktor. 

Yes, he replies.

-

The next day at work, when Yuuri sits down at his desk at the front counter, all the coins in the cash register have been meticulously organized. Sitting smack in the center of the desk is the Cold War novel that pink woman ordered. He tucks it into his lower desk drawer and waits for her to arrive early next week. 

-

Meyer falls ill. Yuuri takes him to the vet. It’s cancer. His time clock is slowing ticking to the end. 

He cries all night. 

-

His depression is a sweeping beast. Yuuri is spiraling. Meyer lays with him in bed, as if understanding. He skips work twice. He doesn’t clean his apartment. He hangs up on Chris when he asks about his progress. He doesn’t clean up his mugs, just pours out whatever the hell was in them before and refills them with week old coffee from the pot. 

He considers burning his manuscript. 

He considers calling Viktor. The letter from five years ago is still pinned to the board above his desk, Viktor’s familiar scrawl with his number at the bottom, begging for them to meet and talk. 

He hasn’t touched it since the day he opened it. 

Today will not be that day. 

-  
Minami drags him out of his apartment on the 4th day and takes him grocery shopping. This is not the first time that he has had to do this. His smile is slow, understanding, urging Yuuri to grab fresh fruits and vegetables instead of the cans of soup and coffee beans he always gravitates toward. At this point, Yuuri’s depressive states are just that – states. They come and go, his wrists somehow always bound by them. 

They walk home together. Pollen tumbles off nearby bushes, and Minami is caught in a sneezing fit. Yuuri finds himself laughing, feeling suddenly light, a sudden high that comes from nowhere. 

“I’m glad I could amuse you,” Minami says, a smile pressed across his face. 

Yuuri has a horrible idea.

-

They wake up in bed together, on different sides of the bed. Yuuri is swallowing down tears, not because the sex was really all that bad or he didn’t want to or he’s crying about Meyer again – 

He hasn’t slept with anyone in years. Not since this hit him. And now, he’s laying with his coworker and one of his best friends in bed with him, someone who has been in love with him and admitted it, someone Yuuri should have made sure to keep at an arm’s length as to make sure that no one gets hurt. 

Minami is still fast asleep. Yuuri creeps from bed, leaves a note (isn’t that ironic? Leaving a note saying he’s leaving in his own apartment), and takes Meyer for a long, long walk. 

He ends up at the old swimming pool that bustled in the 30s but is now rotting and cracking. Viktor used to sneak them in over the gate and they would drink cheap wine in the murky pit. It was disgusting. They were young, and in love, and untouchable. Not even the far-off wail of sirens could have driven them out. And when they finally stumbled home, into someone’s bed, they were always warm with wine and hot off each other. 

Now, Yuuri just feels cold. He should have worn another jacket. Meyer looks glum, sniffing around a tree and shivering slightly. It’s been a long walk, but Yuuri wants to make sure that Minami is long gone from is apartment. He’s going to have to open the big bay windows for the first time in ages to get rid of the smell of someone else. It’s going to send all his loose papers flying everywhere. What a hassle. And then later today, he’s inevitably going to see Minami, even though they aren’t scheduled together, and it’s going to be awkward and Minami is probably going to say something dumb like ‘that was nice, huh?’ Like they just got morning coffee instead of spent the night with hands in dark places and mouths heaving into each other’s. Kissing Minami felt like wheezing into a paper bag – finally a release from something inside him, but only a temporary fix. 

After Viktor dumped him, Yuuri spent a long time mourning. He spent time reading books, writing dumb novellas about stupidly beautiful boys and the dumb-asses that fall in love with them. He spent time in dark clubs, so drunk that he couldn’t remember where we was, or who he was with, the next morning. He spent the time in therapy offices, having women with spectacles ask if he ‘thought his behavior was healthy?’

Of course it wasn’t. But it was necessary. Yuuri needed to heal. But he never did. 

They spent two years hopelessly in love. Yuuri thought that it would never end, promised Viktor it would never end, gave Viktor his heart and soul and every bone in his body, begging for it not to end. He miscalculated. 

-

Minami doesn’t even look at him. Yuuri wonders if he’s offended. He wonders if not kissing anyone in the last 5 years made him dusty. He isn’t sure he cares. Minami will probably get over it. And if not, he has Meyer. For now. 

Yuuri should care more. He tries, give Minami a weak smile when he finally raises his eyes to ask Yuuri if he’s scheduled for the next day. ‘no,’ Yuuri tells him, even though he definitely was. Yuuri can just swallow the shift. It’s better than having to work with Minami after this whole incident, to be perfectly honest. He leaves. 

Yuuri makes himself a mug of tea in his favorite cup – it’s blue with little white flowers all over it. He lets it seep so long that it’s just as bitter as he feels. The library is near empty. Yuuri opens up Microsoft word and begins writing. For the first time in a very long time, the words pour out of him. It is not so hard to write that he has to force the words. They come, easy, drifting, powerful. 

It is easy because he writes from memory. His main character has just moved to California. He’s high on the beach, listening to lana del rey and dreaming of someone to come take him away. He is sad and alone and completely lonely. Yuuri can relate. If he and viktor were fused into one person, it would be this character. Yuuri has given him Viktor’s charisma and talent to pull himself together when needed, and Yuuri’s inescapable sadness. He is trying to be the next Eve Babitz or Joan Didion. When he wakes up in the morning, he can’t do anything but think about writing, but when he sits down to write, all he can think about is static. 

Today, the static is productive. His mind blanks out and the words pour like leaves falling from trees in the haze of autumn. His character meets a beautiful man walking down the beach, and he says hello. He falls in love instantly. This man is permeable like that. None of his feelings are real, and that’s how Yuuri always describes the book when people ask what it is about. ‘a man whose feelings are never real.’ 

-

Eventually, someone calls and asks for Yuuri by name. The phone has to ring three times before he is finally pulled from his trance and answers. 

It’s Chris. 

He says that Yuuri hasn’t been answering his phone, and that’s he’s getting worried that he’s dead, and also, is he going to make his fucking deadline? 

Yuuri looks at his wordcount. He’s over what Chris wanted by next week. He looks at the time. Four hours have passed. He feels like he is waking up from a very long, and very exhausting nap. 

Yeah, Yuuri tells Chris, spinning in the chair. I’m writing it right now, he says, I’ve over the word count you asked for. I’ll look over what I have tonight and email it to you. 

He still needs to fix that damn scene about the sunshine. 

-

Meyer pukes on his carpet that night. Yuuri spends an hour cleaning the same spot, over and over. 

Out, damned spot, out. 

He thinks he may be losing his mind. 

He spends the entire night listening to Rue Des Cascades and trying to give his character more life than a depressed shell of Viktor. 

He wonders if Viktor misses him at all. If he ever almost calls Yuuri, maybe just to ask for his recipe for banana bread, or to ask how he’s doing, or to confess that he is also still in love with him. 

The piano transforms in to an accordian. The record track screams. Yuuri opens all his windows, lets the spring rain tumble through his window. His dying plants are finally watered. Meyer whines from his perch on the bed. He writes with the windows open, writes like a madman, writes until the sun stains the sky pink and yellow and he shoots an unproofed email off to Chris and jumps into the shower. 

-

Yuuri is the first one at the library. His hands are shaking, he’s so exhausted and hopped up on caffeine. It’s not even 8 am. They don’t open until 9. For the first time in a long time, Yuuri does more than just sit at his desk and type the same stupid words over and over. He starts filing books, puts them back in their correct places, storms through the back room and wipes up all the counters. He reorganizes his desk, throws away every post-it note with shitty pieces of prose on it. He closes the tabs on his laptop. 

When his shift partner for the day, Otabek, finally strolls in, thirty minutes late and casually holding a starbucks paper cup, Yuuri snaps out of it. He sits back down at his laptop, reopens too many tabs, reads about the tragedies of the day, and tries to make small talk to Otabek so he remembers how to talk to more people than just his dog. 

-

The sun says he doesn’t feel so warm anymore. We’re dancing under a dipping sky, fireflies escaping out between reeds of grass and wheat. The goodbye is long and humming. The whole world seems to be singing, cicadas howling as the moon peaks over the Ozarks, and here. We are. Brass and alive and everyone’s favorite summer lullabies turned free. Turning, over and over, around and around.

-

Yuuri cleans up every mug that is scattered around his apartment. He pours out the two-week old coffee, organizes his desk, gives Meyer a bath. The whole world feels blasted open with a high pressure washer. Yuuri feels like he hasn’t slept in years. He takes three times his dose of all his meds, drinks another cup of tea, and sits down with the book Viktor wrote that Yuuri is convinced is about him. 

‘The Human Conquest to Overthrow the Universe’ is not a happy novel. 

Eventually, he falls asleep, slumped over the page that he’s circled in red a thousand times – the moment, page three hundred and sixty five, when he is left crying in the rain by the side of a gas station and never returned for. 

-

&&&

THE BEGINNING

&&&

He kisses like he is trying to breathe, and Yuuri is the only source of air in the world. He kisses like he cannot breathe, and he is being choked. 

Yuuri tangles his hands around Viktor’s neck, leans into his boyfriend’s touch, falls in love all over again with his sleek, silver hair, and how badly he needs Yuuri, and his incredibly practiced kissing style. 

He knows that he is not the first person that Viktor is loved. He is determined to be the last. 

They part. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Viktor says. His lips look as if they have just been covered in a thick layer of candy lip gloss. 

Yuuri nods. Against the white sheets of their bed, it is easy to pretend that this is heaven, and they can stay here, in this moment, forever and ever. Yuuri would die right now if it meant staying in this moment, hot, loved, and in love. He dives back in. 

Viktor’s skin is the color of porcelain and the feeling of ice. He can never get warm. Their apartment is covered in blankets of various colors and origins, most gathered from the yard sales they frequent when they have nothing to do. 

They like to write stories about the items they buy, swapping tales of sweaters and patchwork quilts and the stupid teapots that Viktor keeps buying and Yuuri keeps threatening to throw away. (He never does. They have twelve teapots too many.)

The world is moving in really slow motion. Yuuri keeps kissing Viktor, keeps trying to make him feel every ounce of love that he is pouring into him. If love could make Viktor full, could keep him whole, could make him feel loved, Yuuri would do anything to give it all to him. He would eat until he died. He would kiss Viktor until he ran out of air. 

Viktor presses a leg between Yuuri’s thighs, allows warmth to spill over his entire body, tries to comprehend how beautiful this feels right now, right on the precipice of kissing the sex, the sacred moments that are too tender to touch, but just the right amount of fragile to capture in words. 

This has to be love, Yuuri thinks, as Viktor loops his arms over Yuuri’s back, there is no other explanation. 

-

Viktor wishes him a good day at class when he leaves, trails his fingers through Yuuri’s own warm hands, bends down to kiss his palm goodbye. His waist length silver hair dances as he rooms, as if it is alive, a being of its own. Yuuri braided it last night, after they were tired and fucked out, two French braids that started at Viktor’s elegant forehead and ended at his waist. Even sleeping in braids can’t keep his hair straight, though. Somehow, it still falls perfectly even, a waterfall of silver and cream. 

Because the universe is a joke, they have class on opposite days of the week. Yuuri, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Viktor the other four. But when he’s not in class, or kissing Yuuri, he’s locked in his room, fingers plastered to alternating keys, writing stories that he’ll never show to Yuuri. 

It’s not that he’s jealous. Yuuri thinks he understands. It’s just that he prefers to read books instead of write them. While Viktor writes, Yuuri curls up on the couch with various novels, waiting for Viktor to come and curl up next to him, take him into his arms, kiss him until he no longer has to breathe, and fall asleep tangled in his arms. In the mornings, he makes coffee for the both of them, watching Viktor eat his customary yogurt and granola while Yuuri munches his peanut butter and toast and tries to decide between which of his Janet Fitch novels he’ll reread today. 

Viktor comes home late that day, Tuesday. 

He looks tired, his hair tasseled from the wind, probably from driving with his windows open. Yuuri is cooking stew, and it’s almost ready. Friends is playing on the TV, and the stupid laugh track is pissing Yuuri off. He cleaned the apartment today, vacuumed, did some schoolwork in between polishing counters, finished his latest book (Stonewall). Viktor rarely cleans when he’s off class. Usually he just sits and writes, or so Yuuri thinks. 

“Hi love,” Yuuri calls when Viktor traipses through the door. He tosses this things onto the couch, the once clean couch, and all but rips his shoes off. “Rough day?” Yuuri asks to his retreating back. 

Viktor just slams the door in response. Yuuri shivers slightly. Viktor’s iciness echoes through the flat. It feels empty. He considers calling Viktor to dinner, but it probably isn’t worth it. When Viktor is in a mood, there’s no shaking him out of it. 

He eats alone, sitting at the table, nonchalantly flipping through a stack of mail he’d brought in earlier. There isn’t anything interesting, just ads and junk mail. 

Viktor comes storming back out. 

“Did you move my stuff?” He hisses. 

Yuuri turns around. The barstool smashes into the counter with a loud crack. 

“I cleaned up earlier,” he replies testily. 

“Did you move the stuff on my desk,” Viktor repeats. His arms are crossed, chin jutting defiantly out, as if he can take on the world with that delicious jawline. 

Yuuri nods. Viktor swears under his breath, spins around, and re-slams the door to their room. His fingers shake on the ladle of the soup. 

He sleeps on the couch, scared to intrude. He isn’t sure what he moved that has Viktor in such a mood, but he also doesn’t really care. Viktor’s being a bitch. He can apologize on his own time. Yuuri won’t go groveling for apologies. 

-

Yuuri leaves for class the next morning before Viktor is awake. Or before he emerges, at least. He wears the same jeans and sweater from yesterday, skips his morning routine of eating breakfast, and goes to class with just a cup of coffee and a notebook tucked under his arm. 

Before noon, he has two armfuls and a backpack of unread text messages. It’s Viktor, apologizing. There are lots of heart emojis. 

He accepts the apology. Everyone has bad days. When he comes home that night, tired from sitting in the library pretending like he knows what is going on, Viktor is sitting on the couch, holding bags of Chinese takeout with a sheepish smile. 

“I thought we could eat it in bed and watch TV together,” he suggests. Yuuri tosses all his shit onto the floor and races Viktor to their room. 

That night, they lay together, full and happy, Yuuri collapsed onto Viktor’s chest, a content smile on his face. Viktor is drawing shapes through Yuuri’s t-shirt. It’s soft and comfortable and home. He reclines further, lets his head fall into the crook of Viktor’s neck. Watches the shapes on the television dance by, and eventually falls asleep to the murmurs of foreign people and Viktor’s comforting presence. 

-

Yuuri is alone. The morning sun peeks through their window, a shy creature who peers through the blinds, embarrassed but forced to rise. Yuuri clambers from bed, checks his watch. Viktor shouldn’t be gone yet. He slides out of bed and notices that Viktor’s laptop is gone from its usual perch on the bedside table. 

He finds him on the couch, surrounded by empty coffee cups. Yuuri drapes his arms over Viktor’s back and bends down to kiss his hair in a good-morning gesture. Viktor hums softly. 

“How long have you been up?” Yuuri asks, and Viktor just shrugs. Long enough for Yuuri to wake up alone, he guesses. 

He starts on breakfast. Viktor must have made coffee whenever he got up, which was a long time ago, guessing from how cold the coffee pot is how. Yogurt and granola for Viktor, just coffee for Yuuri. He feels particularly empty. 

Viktor eats slowly, typing in between spoonfuls. Yuuri asks how his work is going, and Viktor just shrugs. Yuuri wonders what he’s working on how. If it’s the same novel that Viktor told him about six months ago, or if he’s moved on since then. Yuuri doesn’t know how to ask anymore, because Viktor doesn’t really know how to tell. He tells himself that its not a big deal. He tries to convince himself that everything is fine. 

When Viktor leaves for class, Yuuri is alone, and not even his books can sate him. 

-

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

-

They go on holiday that weekend. It’s unplanned, but Yuuri is standing at the door with their bags packed and begs Viktor to come with him. He tells him that it can be a writer’s retreat. That he can write while Yuuri reads on a dock overlooking Lake Michigan. That they can fall asleep with no TVs, with no classes circulating in their minds, no busy outside street to drag them away from each other. 

Viktor drives. He plays Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club over and over the whole drive, and Yuuri tries to sing alone, but Viktor doesn’t seem to want to play. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel for the first two hours. He doesn’t loosen his grip until Yuuri pretends to fall asleep. He rests his head against the window, allows the warm blast of the heater to dip into his bones, to lull him into a sense of peace.

He’s driving in the car with the love of his life. He is warm, covered in an old blanket that they got last year at a house in Detriot with an old woman who gave them fresh snickerdoodles and cooed over them. They are going on holiday to a tiny house that Yuuri found online and rented for the weekend with his savings from working in the library. They’re going to eat good food and cuddle and make passionate love in a bed that overlooks the sunset of the lake. They’re going to fall in love all over again and Yuuri is going to ask Viktor if he wants to marry him because, let’s be real, they’re almost done with school and the future is just a –

“We’re here, Yuuri,” Viktor brushes his shoulder. “Wake up, love.”

The world is soft and bathed in light. The sun feels cooler than at home. They clamor from the car, and Yuuri pulls the keyring from his pocket that he picked up earlier this week. They house is small, pushed up against the ocean like a cramped Carracci painting. It seems as if it is about to spill into the lake itself, too full and wooden to stand on the shore any longer. The deck extends into the water, hovering above on low wooden stilts. 

The house itself is only a few rooms. A main living room, furnished with photos of wild geese and minnows darting along spiraling cattails. A blue couch. An upstairs loft, with a big king bed with patterned green bedspread. A stocked kitchen (Yuuri requested it so. He didn’t want to waste time in a grocery store. He just wanted to be here with Viktor, absorbed in the world around them and each other.)

“I like it,” Viktor says. He sets his laptop down on a table, and then his backpack. He reaches out tentatively, as if nervous, for Yuuri’s hand. Yuuri drops his backpack as well and follows Viktor out the sliding back doors and onto the deck. The day is clear. The sun is cold. Muted. Color seems fake. Yuuri wraps an arm around Viktor’s back, hooks it onto his hipbone, rests against him. Viktor sighs and leans into him. “It’s lovely, Yuuri.”

-

And Antigona says. “I will die alone.” 

-

Yuuri is heaving. His body is wound as tightly as a hose bib, tightened and ready for release. Viktor is under him, a smile painted onto his lips. His neck and chest are well marked. Yuuri has left what he can on Viktor. One of Viktor’s hands is on Yuuri’s left hip, the other curled tightly around –

He gives out. Collapsing on Viktor’s chest, unwound and sticky. Viktor half laughs, half moans. They lay in silence for a moment, just breathing. Yuuri’s hair tumbles into his eyes, and Viktor gentle brushes it out of the way. 

“Okay?” Viktor asks gentle, leaning forward to kiss Yuuri’s forehead. His lips are cool. They match the feeling of the sun on Yuuri’s skin while he read on the dock next to Viktor, who wrote in a leather bound notebook that Yuuri gave him for Christmas last year. It was cold but refreshing. It was different than their tiny apartment, the hum of the library at the university, the restless home of reading on the couch. 

He rolls of Viktor and gets up to go to the bathroom to clean them up. When there, he stops and stares at himself in the mirror. Messy black hair, flushed cheeks, ever-softening stomach covered in substance. His face is starting to thin, shoulder broaden, hair tame slightly when he’s cleaned up. He is starting to look like an adult, a real boy. 

Yuuri met Viktor when he was stupid, eighteen, and may as well have been blind. Viktor was the glowing, effervescent English major with a gaggle of men and women alike chasing after him, always carrying a laptop and a notebook under his arms, preaching about Keats and Bukowski. Yuuri hates Bukowski. And at first, he wasn’t sure what to do with Viktor either. 

Gender ambiguous Viktor, with his pointed nose and long hair, his glowing skin and biting eyes, his heart-shaped smile and how he always had to reach over to touch you when he was addressing you. It only took Yuuri half a day to fall in love. It only took a morning of Viktor brushing his hands across the table in the library, ranting about his favorite novels, promising to become a famous novelist for Yuuri to be raptured with his poetic beauty and power. There was no escaping the ineffable Viktor Nikiforov.

He leans against the bathroom counter and tries to slow his breathing. He’s been in the bathroom for a while. Maybe Viktor is asleep. Maybe he can curl up next to him and fall asleep and everything can be alright.

Yuuri does not want to look himself in the mirror anymore. 

He knows. He knows they’re on a precipice. He hoped that today would save him. Them. 

That Viktor would put his work down, and Yuuri would put his novel down, and they would crash on the couch and drink coffee and cuddle and chat. That’s all he wants. For Viktor to talk to him, to tell him what’s been wrong so lately, to ask why he never initiates sex, to ask what he’s working on, if it’s okay to ask, to ask why Viktor never asks about him. 

But they stayed on separate sides of the same room. Separate halves of the same brain. Arms brushing, hearts far away. Viktor’s, buried in his work, and Yuuri’s, buried in Viktor. 

Yuuri returns to the bedroom. Viktor is still awake, laying on his side, curled toward the door to the bathroom. He’s waiting. Yuuri settles in the bed beside him, hands him a warm, wet cloth to clean up with. Viktor hums a thank you and cleans up. The towel falls to the floor. Yuuri curls up next to Viktor, and cannot help but feel very, very small in his arms. 

He feels like a delicate bird, precious and small, ready to be broken, craving to be cherished. He has had two years of nothing but love and light by Viktor’s side. He wants to bring it back. He would kill to bring it back. 

“Do you love me?” Yuuri asks. His voice wavers when he asks. There are earthquakes in his lungs, tumbling towers in his trachea. Viktor pulls back to look at him. His blue eyes are quizzical. 

“Of course I do,” Viktor replies, voice concerned. “What’s wrong?”

Yuuri presses himself into Viktor’s chest. “Just being dumb,” he says. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize,” Viktor says, runs his hands through Yuuri’s short hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” 

He nods. His arms wrap tightly around Viktor’s middle. They have to leave around noon tomorrow, head back to their tiny apartment to their rapidly-stale lives where they swear they love each other but Viktor never shows it anymore. 

He wants to live in this moment. Here, now, when Viktor holds him and reassures him, presses kisses to his forehead between promises, his arms steady and tight and lovely and strong. Home. 

Time should be banned from moving. Yuuri is drifting off. Viktor is humming now, something Russian. Maybe an old song that his mother used to sing him to sleep to. The bed is warm. The air is still. Viktor’s voice is a Raffi tape that he heard as a child. 

It is the calm before the storm.

He drifts off to sleep. Time continues running, a forgotten pocket watch on the floor of the cabin. Tick. Tick. Tick. 

-

There is no Beatles on the radio this morning. They drive in silence. Something is wrong. Yuuri can only know this moment now. He wishes he was like the humans created from Maize in Inca legend, who could see all, who could challenge the gods, who could see the past and the present and the future. If he could study the world and figure out where everything went wrong and then look ahead and see when it started to go right, he would do it. 

Make me inhuman, Yuuri begs, make me something more. Viktor’s hands are tight around the steering wheel. Knuckles white. Breath rattling. 

“We need gas,” Viktor says. Yuuri knows for a fact that their tank in still half-full. 

He checks his phone to find the nearest gas station anyways. “Next exit,” he instructs. “First left.” 

Viktor nods tightly. “We need to talk,” he says. “I just don’t want to do it when I’m driving.” 

Yuuri’s stomach flings itself against the walls of skin. He feels like he is dying. 

“Yeah,” is all he says. No ‘no, Viktor, keep driving! Keep going, we will be okay!’. He doesn’t know how to say that. He doesn’t –

Viktor parks and turns off the car. They aren’t at the station yet, they’re on the road just before it. He can hear the hum of the old lights from here. 

Somewhere in the distance, dogs are howling. It is eerie. Yuuri wraps his arms around himself, shivers. ‘don’t let us go,’ he thinks, but he does not say. 

Viktor turns to him, reaches his hands across the center console to rest, and sighs. 

“Hey,” he says. “Look at me.”

Yuuri turns slowly. Viktor’s eyes are filling with tears. 

This must be how people feel before they are guillotined. On the edge, the precipice, hovering. About to die, still throbbing with life. Full, but about to be empty. 

I am a spilling glass of water, Yuuri thinks. Viktor is opening his mouth to speak. The glass is tilting. 

“I know you…” Viktor’s voice fades out. The whole world is static. He is filled with cicadas, they swarm through his mouth and brain and ears. He can hear nothing. 

“…agree?” 

Yuuri must reply. He must say something. There are tears spilling over Viktor’s cheeks, Hoover dam bursting.

His face is wet. Yuuri reaches up, realizes that there are tears falling from his face. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to react.

Don’t fuck this one up, it’s all you’ve got, Yuuri tells himself, but it’s too LATE. And 

Here is Viktor, restarting the car, and life is moving too fast and Viktor is leaning his head against the steering wheel and crying and

This has to be a bad dream and any moment Yuuri will wake up in a cabin by the lake with his love at his side and they’ll be wrapped up in each other’s arms and so stupidly in love that they’ll oversleep and sing the whole way home and

Yuuri is charging out of the barely-moving car, racing to the nearby ditch, tumbling to his hands and knees. Viktor is following. Yuuri is vomiting up bile, empty carcass rattling. 

“GO!” Yuuri screams, feeling Viktor’s hand on his back. “If you’re going to leave, do it completely.”

Viktor is choking out apologies like it’s all he knows. Is this all they know? Breaking and trying to fix it, never realizing that tape isn’t enough to do the trick? 

Go, he thinks, wiping his mouth on the back of his fist. Please. It’ll be easier if you’re just gone. 

Viktor is hovering between staying and waiting. He doesn’t seem to know what to do. Hell if Yuuri knows. He’s just been dumped at a shitty gas station by the love of his life. 

“Get in the car, Vitya,” Yuuri threatens. “And leave.” 

Viktor looks as if he might protest. He spins the keys on his finger. He’s still crying. 

“I don’t want to go home with you.” He says. 

What he doesn’t say is. 

‘Please ask me again. Please stay. Just one more time, and then I’ll say yes. Please. Ask me again.’

He doesn’t need ghost stories anymore. He is one. 

 

&&&  
THE END  
&&&

 

The call goes through. Yuuri leans against the desk, rubbing Meyer absentmindedly while he twists a pen in his hands. His breath rattles slightly. He thinks “please.” 

A voice, unfamiliar yet so, painfully close, answers the phone. 

“Hello?” It says. 

“Hi,” Yuuri replies. 

“Who is this?”

“Its – uh,” your ex-boyfriend. The one you left at a gas station in the middle of the night. The one you sent a letter to years ago with your phone number and said to call whenever. That person. He finally wants to be found. “It’s Yuuri. Katsuki.” 

The line is quiet for a moment. The receiver seems to be muffled. Yuuri hears scratching, as if Viktor is trying to conceal it in his jacket pocket. Keep Yuuri’s call a secret. 

“Sorry,” he says, “I needed to go somewhere more private.” 

It’s not that he didn’t expect Viktor to move on – because he did. Viktor is in his dreams, and his nightmares too. Sometimes, it’s him he’s kissing, and sometimes, it’s strange men. 

“Can we talk?” Yuuri blurts. “There’s some – I need to clear the air.” I need to start living my life, he thinks. 

Silence on the other end of the line for a moment. 

“I didn’t think you’d ever call,” Viktor says. “Sure. Let’s meet. Um. Are you still in Brooklyn?” 

Yuuri nods, corrects himself, and answers yes. 

“There’s a coffee shop I really like down there. Perk and Grind? How about Saturday at noon?” 

Yuuri knows Perk and Grind. It’s close to the ocean, kind of by Coney Island. He doesn’t go there often. It’s out of the way for him. 

“Yeah, okay,” Yuuri says. He checks his phone. It’s Wednesday. He has time to panic about this before it happens. 

Viktor clears his throat. “It’s good to hear from you,” he says. “I’ve missed talking to you.” 

“Okay,” Yuuri says, because how does he respond to that? ‘Thanks, I’ve missed you too. Also, I’m so still in love with you and that’s becoming a real problem I’m finally trying to deal with?’ 

He hangs up the phone. Maybe Viktor was on the precipice of rescinding his offer. Yuuri doesn’t care to know. He sets the phone down, and sits on the floor. Meyer crawls into his lap, scruffy face bright and eager to see Yuuri on his level, ready to administer petting. 

He drags his fingers through his dog’s coat. He vows to be better.

-

Minami finally talks to him on Friday. It’s an apology. He says that he didn’t mean to make Yuuri feel uncomfortable, and he doesn’t want to jeopardize their relationship. Yuuri places a hand on Minami’s shoulder and leans into him, one of those bro-hugs that the frat boys used to give Viktor. Yuuri watched from afar. 

“Thank you,” Yuuri says. “For being a friend when I really didn’t have anything at all.” 

Minami smiles, a genuine smile. 

“So we’re good then?” He asks. Yuuri nods, releasing him. 

“Only if you put away everything on the hold cart.” 

Minami groans. 

-

Saturday comes in a hazy fog. Yuuri wakes up slowly, feeds his dog, takes him for a walk, takes a shower, gets dressed, checks the clock – FUCK – and leaves the house. 

He forgets his keys. He’s a mess. His hair is going everywhere, and his sweater feels like it either shrunk in the wash or he gained more weight. His jeans have a coffee stain on the left thigh if you look really hard, so Yuuri hopes that Viktor isn’t. 

The subway smells like sweat and leather polish. He keeps his head down, hoping that Viktor doesn’t happen to be on the same subway, watching the hot mess that is Yuuri unfold. He’s trying to do his hair in the gross window of the same shitty subway that’s probably been running since the fucking dark ages and the guy next to him is rolling a joint and laughing at how dumb Yuuri looks, trying to comb his crime scene hair into something more impressive. 

He isn’t sure who he’s really meeting. Is Viktor going to pick him up, hug him, swing him around when he sees him? Unlikely, Yuuri tells himself. It’ll probably be a handshake and an awkward hug and pretending like they don’t have two years between them and ten years apart. 

Yuuri exits the subway, shrugging his bag over his shoulder. What is Viktor expecting? Who is Viktor expecting? Probably not the shell of a young librarian, still washed up over an ex. 

‘This is going to be the end of all this,’ Yuuri thinks as he climbs out of the station. ‘After today, I can finally let him go.’

The coffee shop is a short jaunt down the road. He walks with his head down, self-conscious of how tight his sweater is around his middle. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath before entering. The handle is well worn, stickers covering it from years of decals. He reaches for it with a shaking hand, but -

“’Scuze me,” A voice says from behind him. Yuuri turns around slowly. Viktor is standing behind him. “I thought it was you,” he says with a smile. Surprisingly, Viktor reaches forward and pulls Yuuri into a hug. He smells like cloves, Yuuri thinks, and his hair is short now. 

Figures. It’s been years. Of course Viktor would have grown out of his long haired phase. They’re real adults now. Grown-ups. 

“Hey,” Yuuri says, muffled into Viktor’s shoulder. He hugs back awkwardly, pats his back slowly as they meet. 

They enter, and do the ritual dance when you meet up with someone you haven’t seen in a long time. All the false ‘how’s it goings? Where are you living? Where are you working? Wow! That’s awesomes.’ 

The table is too cold for Yuuri’s taste. He wants to reach across and pull Viktor into him, absorb him. He’s going off on a tangent about his latest book he’s writing. He’s nervous. Viktor only rambles when he’s nervous. He wants to kiss him. He wants to tell him that his book is going to be fantastic and that everything is going to be fine and –

“I was recently dumped,” Viktor says, stirring his tea and staring into it, “so I’m kind of at a loss for a writing muse right now.” 

Yuuri blacks in to the present conversation. 

“You’re my muse,” he blurts, before he can stop himself. “I mean. Kind of,” Yuuri stammers, trying to cover up his tracks. “The main character is sort of based off you.”

Viktor looks startled. He has stopped stirring his tea. He is looking Yuuri in the eyes. His mouth is opening. 

“Yuuri?” Viktor says slowly. “You have been the muse for every book I’ve ever written. For all the novels I’ve started, for all the character sketches I’ve done. They’re all for you.”

Yuuri’s mouth parts slightly. His lips are dry, he notices. 

“I was so angry when I left you at that station. And when you moved out. And I was angry for a long time. At you. And then,” Viktor sips his now well-stirred tea. “I realized that it was myself I was really angry at, for letting you go. For not treating you like you deserved. For getting caught up in writing and school and,” he lowers the cup. “I’ve never forgotten it. They say you never forget a first love, and you were mine.” 

This conversation has progressed rather quickly, Yuuri thinks. There are many ways he could reply. He could always tell Viktor that he came here for closure, and that this isn’t what he was looking for. He could pull his laptop from his bag and show Viktor all the drafts of characters he had written, trying to mold someone as perfect as Viktor in his imperfect world. He could reach across the table and kiss those soft, pink lips, undoubtedly more worn and well-kissed than the last time Yuuri greeted them, but then again, so is he. More worn. Questionably kissed. 

In the end, he chooses a different option. 

“I love you too,” he says.

-

Yuuri wakes up with a stranger in his bed. Except it isn’t a stranger, and it isn’t Minami either. Viktor’s silver hair flutters in the heat of the radiator. Yuuri reaches across the bed to pick up his phone and check the time. It’s almost six in the morning. He doesn’t have work today. He is free to take Meyer out and go back to bed. 

Yuuri curls up under the blankets and tosses an arm over Viktor’s sweater-clad body. 

They hadn’t had sex. They really hadn’t done anything at all, just chaste kisses here and there. 

After meeting for coffee, and Yuuri basically spilling his guts about how he was still in love with Viktor and blah blah blah, Viktor had looked stunned, horrified, and elated all at once. 

The thing is, Yuuri knows it isn’t healthy. He’s a piece of shit, but he’s a self-aware piece of shit, at least. You shouldn’t be hung up on someone for that long. 

But here, laying next to Viktor’s warm body, remembering the way that Viktor played with Meyer and listening to all of Yuuri’s stories, and traced the photos in his room like he was trying to absorb the memories inside them? How could Yuuri not still be in love? How could he not still want this?

“I want this back,” Yuuri whispers in to the soft nest of Viktor. “I want us back, but better.”

Viktor hums in response. He turns groggily, as if dragging himself from sleep. He mumbles a good morning, and throws an arm over Yuuri. He leans into it, accepting the warmth and comfort that comes with Viktor. 

There, they lay, until Meyer is whining for food and Yuuri is forced to drag himself out of bed to feed him. 

And Viktor is there and he is a beautiful demon in Yuuri’s bed – everything he’s wanted and everything he wants to get rid of. 

What does he do? 

“Make me breakfast?” Viktor says from the bed. “Please?” 

And Yuuri does. He cooks pancakes and they eat them in bed and they fall into each other’s arms and the world is many things but for once, whole is one of those things. And when Viktor finally rises, stretches, places his plate on the table and notices the dogeared book that Yuuri keeps on his bedside table, he just laughs. 

“A fan?” Viktor chuckles. “Be careful, I’ll write you into a novel.” 

Yuuri shrugs. He’s been rereading Viktor’s novels since he stared publishing. He isn’t sure if he’s searching for himself or for a trace of Viktor in them. 

“Please do,” Yuuri replies, “Immortalize me in your heart.” 

Viktor gets a faded look in his eyes. 

Is Yuuri immoral to Viktor? Or is he just another night spent in another bed? 

“I have to go soon,” Vikor traces the pattern on Yuuri’s sheets. “But I think we should do this more.” 

“Ah,” Yuuri says, and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Do what, exactly?”

Viktor shrugs. “Everything,” he says. “Coffee. Cuddling. Kissing.” 

Yuuri nods eagerly. “I want –”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He isn’t sure what he wants. He wants Viktor. He does. In any way that he can have him. 

Yuuri tells him this, and Viktor gives him a faded smile, and then rises. Yuuri wraps his arms around him, hugs him tight, like he can trap Viktor into his lungs so when he breathes it doesn’t feel so lonely. 

There’s that quote. About flowers growing in lungs, but then choking on them. Yuuri understands it, now. 

“-us,” he says, lamely. He doesn’t know how else to put it. He scrunches the sleeves of his sweater up and worriedly takes the plates from breakfast up to the sink. Meyer continues to sleep at the foot of the bed while Viktor pets him. “I know it’s stupid,” Yuuri says, rubbing the sponge in circle after circle over the plate. You know that feeling when you drink too much caffeine and the whole world feels like it’s spinning but you aren’t? Yuuri feels that. “I just never got over you. You were my first love, and you left our chapter unfinished, and I’m not over you, even though I’ve tried so damn hard.” He sets the plate into the drying rack with an unceremonious crash. “I’m still pissed at you for what you did to me. For leaving me like you did. For giving me two years of love and then some change at the end that couldn’t be called that.” 

“I’m sorry.” Viktor says. It is the apology laden of a man who has spent a long time changing. “I don’t. Mean to be here, begging at your feeet-

“But I am.” Yuuri interrupts him. “I’m here, begging for you to take me back. I have been since I saw you seated in that coffee shop. You don’t have to fucking beg because I’m doing it for you.”

Viktor hums. He stands, graceful limbs unfolding like a paper crane being taken apart. He raises his arms over his head to stretch. Here, Yuuri thinks, looking at the crease of silver skin that is exposed, is where I want to touch you. 

“Okay,” Viktor says finally, arms settling back down at his sides. “Let’s just see where this goes?” 

Yuuri’s breath stops. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t expect that.” 

Viktor crosses the cold floor, wraps his arms around Yuuri and squeezes him tightly. His body is soft, pliable under Viktor’s hands. He could melt like a Dali clock in his arms. 

“Let’s see what happens,” he promises. 

-

Viktor is outside the library, holding a bouquet of daisies in his hands. There’s no wrapped, he probably picked them from a garden on his walk here. 

Yuuri pulls the sleeves of Viktor’s sweater down over his hands and smiles sheepishly. He carries a leaflet of papers in his left hand, it’s the final chapter of his book. Inspiration has finally come. Chris still calls to bother him about his lack of punctuation and how many damn comma splices he has. 

It’s over. It’s finally over. The hard-spun words that twisted Viktor into an unreachable beast, someone to be admired but never held, have come to a close. His book goes to the editors tonight. He’s getting published. 

Viktor has finished his latest piece, too. It’s a novella about meeting every soulmate you’ll have in your life at a park, at once. A great congregation of love, he’d called it. Yuuri had shoved him and told him it was just an emotional orgy. 

They let Meyer’s ashes go underneath the tree he loved to pee on most. It seemed like a fitting and pleasing end for Yuuri’s best friend. To let him to go to the place he loved most. Yuuri dug a hole and buried his favorite toy and one of his favorite treats too, just to give him something to take with him into the afterlife. 

He and Viktor live together now. The coffee cups around the apartment are cleaned up now. There are no ghosts living inside unopened envelopes. They are falling back in love, with the different people that they have become. Yuuri is no longer in love with the boy that he knew years ago. He is falling in love with this Viktor, his Viktor, the one that he gets to keep now. Sometimes he still gets sad. Love does not make life perfect, but it makes life easier to bear.

Everything, for once, is clear. It is okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please LIKE AND COMMENT I'M THIRSTY FOR ATTENTION. That is all. you can find me on tumblr dot com at lovelesslethargy . peace, my dudes. don't start drama, i don't have the emotional bandwidth for it.


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